Occupational Therapy...

So last week was the end of an era! It was my last week as a full-time, stay at home mum. As of next week I will be a full-time mother/University student! This week...well I'm on holiday! Not literally you understand but Emily has started nursery a week early, to allow me time to collect my thoughts and organise this big change in our lives.

As of next Monday I will be enrolled as a full-time student O.T which stands for...wait for it...Occupational Therapist.......(pause)

No, I know you still don't know what I am talking about do you?! (sigh)

Having a mother as an O.T has meant I have spent the last 31 years (well okay maybe only 25 of those) trying to explain what exactly an O.T is and what it is that they do! On the rare occasion these two words are met with vague recognition and not a glazed expression I am overjoyed at the prospect that maybe the person I am dealing with might possibly know what an Occupational Therapist is! And upon meeting someone within the health care profession that does know what an O.T is I am practically nauseous with excitement! Sad I know but I lead a rather un-rock n roll lifestyle these days so it doesn't take much to excite me!

So okay for all you people out there that do not know what it is an Occupational Therapist does the COT (College of Occupational Therapy) describes it as follows:

"Occupational therapists view people as occupational beings. People are intrinsically active and creative, needing to engage in a balanced range of activities in their daily lives in order to maintain health and wellbeing. People shape, and are shaped by, their experiences and interactions with their environments. They create identity and meaning through what they do and have the capacity to transform themselves through premeditated and autonomous action.

 
The purpose of occupational therapy is to enable people to fulfil, or to work towards fulfilling, their potential as occupational beings. Occupational therapists promote function, quality of life and the realisation of potential in people who are experiencing occupational deprivation, imbalance or alienation. They believe that activity can be an effective medium for remediating dysfunction, facilitating adaptation and recreating identity."

Still confused?! 

Basically think of anything that you do on a daily basis, bathing, dressing, walking down the stairs, leaving the house, going to work...anything at all. Now imagine for whatever reason you couldn't perform that task anymore. For example you had an accident, developed a mental illness, were brain damaged, had a stroke, were diagnosed with a debilitating disease or maybe you were born with a disability that means you were never able to perform that task without assistance in the first place. Well that is what O.T's are for and no not to do it for you but to provide you with the support you need to either help you perform that task again or adapt your life around the fact that you cannot do that task alone and unaided anymore. They provide people with the necessary tools, whether that is re-teaching tasks, breaking them down into manageable steps, teaching people how to cope with a change in environment and how that change may effect their daily occupations or providing equipment or adaptations to a person's property to enable them to live more independently and more comfortably. So that is a very basic explanation of what an O.T is and what they do but if you remember that it will take me 3 years to qualify on a course that is a mixture of Anatomy & Physiology, Psychology and Sociology. Then you start to get an idea of the variety and scope of the job. 

So I don't expect anyone I know to ever ask me again what exactly it is an Occupational Therapist does...is that understood?! Ha ha....

Leaving home...

I remember watching a sketch with comedian Michael Mcintyre, where he talks about the differences between people with children and people without. Hilarious! I laughed myself silly because obviously it was very funny but mostly because it was just so true! I relayed details of the sketch to one of my best mummy friends and she nearly wet herself in the middle of the street laughing so much! 

One of the topics he covered was leaving the house. He said:

This is how people without children leave the house.
 'Shall we leave the house?'
'Yes'
 They exit the house.
(note the above will only be funny to people with children, those without will just shrug their shoulders and agree 'yes indeed this is how we leave the house'.)

He then goes on to explain in detail how he attempts to leave the house each and everyday. If you haven't seen it I recommend you watch it, very funny indeed! Michael Mcintyre Christmas Comedy Roadshow

So it occurred to me today, whilst running nearly half an hour late for my play date, that I couldn't recall it ever taking this long to leave the house before I had Emily. Admittedly I have got a lot better at it more recently, just after Emily was born I was lucky if I could make it out the house within 2 hours of when I said I would be leaving. It's still so hard though. 

This morning, I was attempting to tidy up whilst getting myself dressed and ready to leave. Emily emptied the entire contents of her box of playmobile toys onto the lament floor in the lounge. Toys scattered everywhere. She then abandoned the toys in favour of pulling items off the book case. I must have asked her a dozen times to put on her shoes, she of course ignored me instead using her small pink table as a make shift ladder so she could gain access to the kitchen cupboard that contains a large pot of pick n mix left over from our trip to Legoland. She spilt her juice all over the sofa and herself so I had to get her completely undressed and re-dressed. I finally managed to wrestle her into her coat and shoes, we left the house. She ran off down the road whilst I was locking the door. I managed to get her back and into the car, strapped her into her seat whilst I returned to the house to retrieve her toothbrush because she hadn't brushed her teeth as I had asked. Then I had to go back into the house again because we needed baby wipes for her runny nose. By now I had locked and unlocked the door three times, it was 10.20 and we hadn't even left the street yet! We finally made it to soft play exactly 27 minutes after we said we would arrive. And sadly that might be a personal best for us!  

Not measuring up!

Warning: Sorry a rather self-absorbed, self-pitying blog this time I'm afraid! So I suggest that if you think it will upset or anger you to read it that you do not read it! To all that do decide to read it I apologise and promise to make my next blog more upbeat and positive! x

As a parent I have massive guilt, most of the time! And there are times when I feel like I just don't measure up! I have moments of feeling like a huge failure and I have to say that the last few months have felt very much like this! 

Emily is going through a particularly difficult and extremely tiring stage. She constantly questions everything that I say or ask of her, if she listens at all to me in the first place. Everything involves some sort of fight or argument, it's like a constant battle of wills and I just don't have the energy to keep up with her and her constant demands. 

Most days we are up at 6.30am and I spend the next 12 and a half hours feeling like my head is gradually building up to explosion point! I long for 7pm so I can take her to bed, even though bedtime in itself is a fight. A fight to get her ready, to get her into bed and to keep her there once she is in bed! I can't seem to keep my temper and the smallest of things irritate me. I have been told that I am miserable and not myself and is it any wonder really?!

I really don't want my experiences of motherhood to be like this! When I look around at people I know, people who are going through extremely difficult situations it makes me feel guilty that I am not coping better. Emily is here with me, whenever I want and she is healthy and happy and that should be enough! And it is enough but I am just so god damn tired all the time and don't feel like there is anything left for me. I spend every night sat in, alone and not able to do anything or go anywhere because Emily is in bed and then weekend's mostly all I want to do is sleep to recover. I would love to do something constructive with my time alone but I haven't enough money or energy.  

To make it worse people are constantly telling me to enjoy this time I have with Emily before I have to go to University but in all honestly I cannot wait to get to University so we have a routine and there are other people around to help me occupy her time and keep her stimulated. She is as bright as a button and extremely quick which is a joy and what every parent wants but it is truly exhausting and makes me feel like I am just failing to keep her even remotely entertained or stimulated. 

I know that being alone was my choice and it will take time to adjust but I feel lost in a bit of a fog at the moment. I suppose no-one ever said that motherhood was going to be easy and as people keep telling me it won't get any easier, just different. I just hope that eventually I will get better at dealing with it all or at least stop feeling like such a big failure.... 

A picture is worth a thousand words...

...or so it is said. 

For me pictures have always been important. They are a way to look back and remember a time, place or person that impacted on my life in some way. They are my memories.

So blogger readers I share my memories with you here today and I hope that they will make you smile. As the song says, 

"In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And darkness still inside you
Makes you feel so small."

So at times like those it is good to remind yourself of all that is great in the world or at least in the world that is all yours!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9e-M6kd6Xc&feature=player_embedded

Enjoy x

Love...

I wanted to write about love but I realised that I no more understand the complexities of love then I do of life. The raw emotions that we feel, the ones that cannot be verbalised because they exist only to us, to try and explain them to another can feel rather daunting, unexplainable even. There are no words that can convey the gravity of what love is to each person. I know what love is to me, although I may not be able to express it adequately in words, I feel it right at the centre of my being every time I look at a person that I love. However I cannot be sure that what I feel is the same as what any other person feels even though the sub-text may appear the same at times.

The prophet, Kihlil Gibran wrote “as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he ascends to your heights and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.” And this is what love has taught me. At it's height you can feel no greater elation, it will lift you up and beyond any kind of happiness you ever thought possible. However when love crucifies you it does it in such a way that you feel torn apart from yourself, the enormity of pain that it can inflict on you is devastating. So much so that sometimes you feel you may never recover. Sadly some people, broken hearted, never do...I know no other emotion (if you can categories love as an emotion) that has the potential to do this to you. No other emotion that has the power to propel you into the stratosphere one moment and slam you hard and cold back to earth and bury you deep the next.

Love comes in many forms for different people but as my blog is about my experiences as a parent then I must talk about my love for Emily I guess. The love you feel for your child is an all encompassing thing. It surrounds you and makes you weak and vulnerable and (only speaking from personal experience now) it is unmatched in power to that which you feel for any other. My love for Emily is fierce and unrelenting, it is all consuming and self-sacrificing. It keeps me going when I want to give up and forces me onward, everyday, even when I feel like I have nothing left to give. It terrifies me because it exists in a place I have no control over and is rooted deep in the centre of who I am. I cannot hide my heart from her, like I have done with so many other people in my life, not that I would want to of course but it is truly humbling to love so profoundly and without question. I never got it before. All those years when my own mother would look at me with genuine love in her eyes no matter what I might be telling her or what I might have done. I didn't understand that it could be possible to value another person's life more than your own but now I understand.

So maybe love is so complex because the nature of love is unfounded. We do not know where it comes from, or what controls it. We only know how it feels to us and I guess that is all we can really understand about it or maybe that is all I can ever understand.

Just a few late night thoughts...  

All by myself...

Generally I don't like to think that I can't cope. I am fiercely independent and extremely stubborn and always have been even since I was Emily's age. Although back then my mother always insisted that I was just 'strong willed', which is a nice way of saying I was a pain in the backside (she smiles)! So I don't like the idea that I might not be able to do something or everything for that matter, unless of course it relates to flat-pack furniture in which case I am quite happy to let someone else do it for me, ridiculous invention! 


Anyway life is a little hectic at the moment, which may indeed be a severe understatement. Let's see what you think? Currently I am in the process of revising for my exams, whilst sorting, cleaning, decorating and packing for a house move that will take place immediately after my exams. This is all done whilst helping Gavin move house last weekend, filling in forms, organising meetings with my prospective landlady, organising a man with a van to help me move, calls to Sky, calls to insurance company, trips to the postoffice to send supporting documents for my bursary, trips to the doctors to obtain a copy of my immunisations for University, trips to the charity shop, trips to the tip and looking after my sister/mother's guinea pig whilst my mother is away (which reminds me I really must go buy a newspaper to line his cage). Oh and Emily is at home with me constantly at the moment as with the Queen's jubilee and half-term both her nurseries are closed. And she is now poorly bless her, running a temperature and miserable with suspected Chicken Pox (although the spots are yet to appear). We haven't slept much these pass few nights. 


So as I said I don't like to think that I cannot manage but even I have to admit that breaking down and crying at the news that Gavin has had to cancel the internet connection (during exam revision week) may be a slight overreaction and blubbering on the phone to my sister yesterday may be a sign that things aren't exactly 'fine' but I am just going to put it down to my hormones, bloody hormones making me all irrational. So I will survive and get through all this without taking up chain smoking or heavy drinking and without developing a stomach ulcer in the process and the runny nose that has appeared over the last few days can bugger off. I just don't have time to be ill right now! Beside on a day like today when I think about what other people close to me are having to deal with it puts my life into prospective...


Right where is my list?
  

SAHM's!

I read an article today about SAHM's (stay at home mums). Apparently a childless woman had written into an advice column complaining that her mummy friends had little or no time for her, they would not respond to her emails and text messages. She felt like they were avoiding her and could not understand, when they didn't work what they did all day. Hmmmm...Well the columnist had to refrain from speaking the true nature of her thoughts and was obviously as diplomatic as she could be. This did however sparked a reaction in one particular SAHM who wrote an article for Yahoo news reviewing exactly what it is she does on a typical day and I have to admit although only having one child (unlike this woman who has a toddler and a baby) it all sounded very familiar. 


In truth I have never received any such reactions from any of my childless friends, but that is because none of them are selfish or unaware enough not to realise that being a parent (particularly the one that stays at home) is hard. However it would seem that there are many people out there still wondering what exactly SAHM's do all day, even (sadly) the partners of some of the said SAHM's, who seem to have little understanding of what it is their other half does all day when at home with the children. 


So for all 'those' people let me run you through a typical day for me with Emily...


Yesterday she was awake at the usual time 6.45am, you could set your watch by her most days. She came in complaining that her pyjama trousers were wet, not a regular occurrence granted but we still have the odd night accident. I was still half asleep and in agony with stomach cramps (period related) so I got up, changed her trousers and took her to the toilet. Then I went to the toilet, got dressed, got Emily into her dressing gown, stripped the sheet off her bed (luckily the duvet was still dry) and we went downstairs. I got Emily some juice, made her some breakfast, gave her her antibiotics and vitamin tablet and then sat her down with Nick Jr. whilst I went to make myself a cup of coffee and take some paracetamol to numb the pain! Next I did the washing up, emptied the drier and took Emily's clean clothes upstairs to put away. I opened her curtains, tidied away her toys from last night. Made my bed and collected some dirty washing to put in the machine. Came back downstairs, checked on Emily who had now finished her breakfast and was smearing her dirty hands all over the sofa. So I cleaned up Emily, cleaned up the sofa, blew Emily's runny nose and got her ANOTHER drink of juice (please mummy). Made myself another cup of coffee as the last one, only half drunk has now gone cold. Put the washing in the machine and then went back to check on Emily, who has converted my lounge into a softplay centre whilst I had been gone, emptying the entire contents of her toy box onto the floor. I sat down to drink my second cup of coffee when Emily informed me that she wanted a poo and she wanted to do it on the potty! She still refuses to go on the toilet unless she has to and it just isn't worth the fight right now. So went to retrieve the potty from upstairs, put Emily on the potty and sat down to drink my coffee. She then informed me that she has finished and wanted grapes, banana's and more juice (please mummy), so I took her off the potty, cleaned her bum and took the potty upstairs to empty the contents into the toilet. Rinsed the potty and left it soaking in the bathroom. I went back downstairs and into the kitchen. Brought the fruit and juice back into the living room and sat down to write my blog. Finished blog and realised what time it was! We had to be at nursery in an hour! So I chucked Emily in the shower, brushed my teeth, brushed Emily's teeth, got her out of the shower, wrestled with her whilst trying to put cream on her sore bum as she sobbed and screamed, wrestled with her whilst getting her dressed. Then I left her to play for 5 minutes whilst I had a shower and got dressed. 


Once dressed I got Emily and took her downstairs, wrestled with her whilst brushing and drying her hair, she screamed and cried the whole time. Made her a  tuna sandwich before nursery that she poked and prodded and basically tore up into tiny piece flicking bits of tuna and bread all over the table and the carpet in the process, before finally eating only half the sandwich. I ignored the mess and dried my own hair and threw on some makeup to cover the dark shadows under my eyes. Took some more paracetamol for the pain in my stomach. Got Emily's bag ready for nursery, got my coat and shoes on, cleaned Emily up after eating her sandwich and asked her to find her shoes for me whilst I went to the toilet.  Came back downstairs to find her sitting on the floor with piles of shoes around her although none actually on her feet. Found her shoes, put them on, found her coat and put that on, only for her to inform me that she needed a wee. I removed her coat and took her up to the toilet where she then informed me that actually she DID NOT need a wee afterall, took her back downstairs and put her coat back on again, managed to get her out of the house into the car. Dropped her at nursery and went into town to pick up a birthday card and present for her to give to Gavin on Saturday.


Came back home, emptied the washing machine and put the contents out to dry. Sat down to do my homework for A&P. Hoovered the hall, kitchen floor and living room carpet, picked bits of tuna out of the rug! Did the washing up AGAIN. Made myself something to eat, by this time it was 2.30pm and this was the first time I had eaten all day. Contacted my mum to tell her that Gavin had put money into her account accidental and arranged to meet her and sort it out. Then I went back out to pick up Emily, brought her back home, got her some juice and a snack. Made myself a cup of tea that went cold as I had to go fetch the potty on three further occasions because Emily was suffering with diarrhoea. Hoovered the upstairs landing and both mine and Emily's bedroom, put a new sheet on Emily's bed, cleaned the bathroom and the toilet. Tidied away Emily's toys AGAIN. Came back downstairs and made Emily some tea, put some tea in the oven for myself. Got Emily cleaned up from her tea, got her changed and ready for bed, got her changed again as she had an accident because she stood in the kitchen moaning at me, whilst I was doing the washing up AGAIN, that she needed the toilet even though I asked her to go on her own four times! Brought the potty downstairs AGAIN so she could go for another poo. Took Emily and the potty upstairs, emptied the potty and rinsed it out, gave Emily her antibiotics, brushed her teeth, took her to bed, read her a story. Went back downstairs, had my tea, watched Eastenders, tidied away Emily's toys in the living room. Went on the computer for a while to check my emails etc...Then went to bed. Got woken up by my neighbours banging on their own door at 'god knows' what time, went back to sleep, got woken up by Emily having had a bad dream and wanting to sleep in my bed. Went back to sleep. THE END...Woke up and started all over again this morning!


Sound familiar? 


I read this on a friends facebook status the other day and I think it speaks to the heart of what being a SAHM is all about. See what you think...

"A man came home from work and found his 3 children outside, still in their pyjamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn around garden. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog. Walking in the door, he found ...an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, the throw rug was against one wall. In the front room the TV was on loudly with the cartoon channel, the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she might be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls. As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pyjamas, reading a novel... She looked up at him, smiled and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, 'What happened here today?' She again smiled and answered, 'You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world do I do all day?...
''Yes," was his incredulous reply..
She answered, 'Well, today I didn't do it."